


Love is a journey through waters and stars

by ameonna (zetsubonna), melospiza



Series: Rook's Gambit [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, First Kiss, M/M, Teen Jim, Teen Romance, Teen Sherlock, Teenagers, Teenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zetsubonna/pseuds/ameonna, https://archiveofourown.org/users/melospiza/pseuds/melospiza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The town was small and quiet and would have been maddeningly boring without Jim. Dear Jim, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Muggle scientists, his constant humming, his telescope, and his warm, soft brown eyes that followed Sherlock wherever he went. Dear Jim, who could also follow Sherlock’s tangled thoughts wherever they wandered, and more often than not had enough of his own to keep Sherlock vastly entertained. The fen was a perfect place for catching insects and birdwatching, and Sherlock liked insects and birds. It was isolated and dark enough to be excellent for stargazing, and Jim loved stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is a journey through waters and stars

**Author's Note:**

> Same 'verse as "The Shortest Distance Between Two Points." The title is from a Pablo Neruda poem.

The summer of 1987 was not particularly hot, but as this was true of almost every summer in the United Kingdom, James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes need hardly have remarked upon it.

Throughout their first four years at school, Sherlock and Jim had similar problems. Both of them were Slytherin, a house that had trouble interacting with other houses. Both of them were overclever and a bit odd, shadowed constantly by rumors of being Dark wizards. In Sherlock’s case, he ignored the rumors, as rumormongering was childish and beneath him. In Jim’s case, he embraced them, making light of it, because he swore up and down that he’d never actually done anything to earn the rumors, other than having inherited an ivy and Augurey feather wand, being  _odd_ , being in  _Slytherin_ , and giggling inappropriately. Some time in second year he began to introduce himself as a madman, his Irish accent twisting trippingly as he gave his name. “James. Jim. They’ll find you in the Thames,” he’d sing-song, followed by, “Moriarty. Pleasure.”  
  
To his endless amusement, no one actually dared call him Jim, except Sherlock. The two of them had found each other when one too many students had muttered that the only person nearly as creepy as Moriarty was Holmes, and vice versa. They were not particularly frightening to one another, at least, not yet. Jim was terribly smart and wickedly funny, and he found Sherlock hilarious, which should have been odd. Sherlock didn’t really try to make Jim laugh. It just happened a lot.  
  
What made the summer of 1987 particularly stand out in Sherlock Holmes’ memory was that it was the summer he was fifteen years old, and the summer he and Jim had been lovers.  
  
A few weeks before school was out, Mummy had written to tell Sherlock where he was going to spend his summer holiday, and Sherlock had told Jim, and then, much to his pleasant surprise, Jim had come with the news that his parents had selected Strumpshaw as well, not without, Sherlock later realized, Jim’s  _extensive_  persuasion.  
  
The town was small and quiet and would have been maddeningly boring without Jim.  _Dear_  Jim, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Muggle scientists, his constant humming, his telescope, and his warm, soft brown eyes that followed Sherlock wherever he went.  _Dear_  Jim, who could also follow Sherlock’s tangled thoughts wherever they wandered, and more often than not had enough of his own to keep Sherlock vastly entertained. The fen was a perfect place for catching insects and birdwatching, and Sherlock liked insects and birds. It was isolated and dark enough to be excellent for stargazing, and Jim loved stars.  
  
They were young and drunk on their own cleverness. Jim would describe constellations, planetary physics and ascribe their mythological and astrological significance, while Sherlock would sigh and pretend to be bored, as star stuff was distant and had little to no impact on the immediate world. They would trade, and Sherlock would categorize and detail his studies of entomology and ornithology, and Jim would listen, seeming amused that he could find passion for things so small.  
  
It was scarcely two weeks into the summer when Jim, having rested his head on Sherlock’s shoulder while he expounded on the life cycle and mating habits of the rare  _Papilio machaon brittanicus_  thriving in the Strumpshaw Fen, suddenly lifted his head and Sherlock discovered that a mouthful of perfect teeth fastening lightly on to the lobe of his ear did astounding things in his trousers.  
  
"Bother the butterflies," Jim murmured without releasing Sherlock’s ear. "What do you know about mating habits in your own species, Sherlock?"  
  
There was something to be said, Sherlock noticed, for the way an Irish lilt crushed the hard letter ‘t’ before it and left English obscenely beautiful in its wake. It startled him to realize he thought of Jim’s accent and eyes and constant giggling as beautiful, as that was not a word that had ever existed in his vocabulary before.   
  
Jim, as far as Sherlock knew up to the incident of the teeth on his ear, was just as appalled by sex as Sherlock himself, considering it a messy, sticky business that could only end in distraction from important and world-changing ideas. They had discussed it, in the cool quiet of their shared bedroom at school, while everyone else was asleep, lying in Jim’s bed with the curtains charmed, their heads close together, very carefully not touching.  
  
It seemed that at some point in the past year, Jim had changed his mind, or so Sherlock gathered from the biting and the suggestive tone of the question. In reality, it wasn’t any more likely for Slytherin boys to flirt with each other than boys of any other house, it was just that Slytherin boys trended toward rich, pure-blooded and aristocratically featured, and other houses tended to think their attractions to one another more obvious.  
  
When Sherlock didn’t respond right away, Jim giggled, right in his ear, and released his earlobe, licking his own lips.  
  
"Go on, then," Jim prompted, excited, his nasal voice drifting up and down in the mocking, discordant way that reminded Sherlock of strings scraping at random across his violin. "Give us a  _reaction_ , dear. A punch in the guts or a kiss on the lips, which shall it be?”

"Neither," Sherlock retorted, turning to look at Jim with his brow furrowed.  
  
He was absolutely puzzled. Usually it pleased him when Jim managed to surprise him, but this time the unexpected bite caused his stomach to churn in a way in which he was wholly unfamiliar. His long fingers were still folded loosely around the binoculars he’d used to examine the butterfly, but he didn’t resist when Jim pulled them out of his hands and set them aside.  
  
Sherlock turned to look quickly over his shoulder to assure himself that they were still alone before he returned his gaze to his companion.  
  
"What are you on?" he asked.

"I was curious," Jim admitted, still leaning very close and completely ignoring all previously established personal space. "What you’d taste like. What you’d kiss like. You’re not just smart, you know, you’re quite pretty. Handsome doesn’t really work, not yet. Maybe in a few years, when you can grow a beard. Or maybe not ever, with those cheekbones."  
  
Jim leaned back on his hands, his manner as matter-of-fact as if he were discussing an upcoming change in the weather. “I thought it might be interesting. I’ve caught myself thinking of you the last few times I’ve had it off in the tub, thought I’d give it a shot, figured you like me well enough to be flattered, even if you said no.”

Sherlock had been called ‘pretty’ before, and it tended to irritate him, especially as some of the boys in their house liked to use it as an insult. But it was different coming from Jim, who thought he was clever and funny and had never said such a thing before. Sherlock quickly averted his eyes, feeling heat rush into his face.  
  
"I thought we talked about it," he said slowly. "And we agreed that it was… messy, and unpleasant, and unhygienic."

"If nothing ever changed, you’d never have your butterflies, would you? Just caterpillars and milk-parsley."  
  
Jim let his voice warble. Most young men their age were embarrassed when their voices cracked and broke. Jim seemed to be cultivating a fractured sound like a melody on an out-of-tune instrument.  
  
"In other words- I changed my mind. I’m interested, if it’s you."

Sherlock’s face was still rather pink. He tried to will the blush away, but it stubbornly refused to abate.  
  
"Oh," he said.  
  
He didn’t have the binoculars to fiddle with anymore, and so he started picking at his fingers instead, peering studiously at his hands just to give himself something to look at other than Jim’s face. The butterflies they’d been observing had moved on, but new ones had appeared, lodged firmly in Sherlock’s stomach and multiplying by the second.   
  
His voice had gone down two octaves and his height had shot up five inches in the past year and a half. He’d tripped and stumbled constantly as he’d tried to sort out a new equilibrium. Sometimes his joints ached. He woke some mornings, covered in sweat with awkward stains on his sheets and pyjamas. His body betrayed him constantly with all of its biological shifts and needs. He couldn’t fight the blush from his face. He couldn’t chase the butterflies from his stomach. The afternoon seemed far too warm all of the sudden.

"Let me kiss you," Jim needled, bumping his shoulder against Sherlock’s arm. "If it’s completely disgusting, I won’t bother you about it anymore. Honor as a Slytherin."  
  
It did explain Jim’s sudden switch from being a habitual consumer of licorice wands to peppermint toads. He’d made up some story about peppermints being more suited to summer, and Sherlock had known it was a lie, just not why Jim would lie about something so small.

The thought of the peppermint made Sherlock run his tongue across his teeth self-consciously. Then he realized that Jim would know exactly what he was thinking and he felt the heat in his face flare anew.  _Damn it._  
  
Well, if this was what he wanted, it was better to just get it over with so that they could go back to the way things had been. He turned toward Jim and huffed out a petulant sigh.  
  
"Fine."

Jim’s grin was only subtly triumphant, not obnoxiously so. He did taste like peppermint toads.  
  
His mouth was warm, though, aside from the cool, soothing flavor of the peppermint, and he left his lips open and closed his eyes, his fingers grasping at the hair at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, barely scraping the pale skin with his fingernails.  
  
He smelled like  _Jim_ ; some kind of hair product to keep it spiked just-so, the slight tang of facial astringent, expensive laundry soap, fancy soap and deodorant, light wool trousers, cotton shirt, licorice hiding under the peppermint.

Kissing was not as unpleasant as Sherlock had expected it to be. In fact, enveloped in the smell and the taste of the person he held most dear, Sherlock thought it was rather pleasant. He did what felt most natural, and so found himself sucking gently upon Jim’s upper lip. He wasn’t sure if that was right, though, so Sherlock broke the kiss and tried again, the press of his mouth more aggressive the second time, his hands clinging to the front of Jim’s shirt.

Something electrifying brushed against Sherlock’s teeth, and he realized it was Jim’s _tongue_. The hand not knotting itself in his hair was on the grass by his hip, and Jim made a soft, hungry, musical noise in his throat, one that was a little higher than might have been strictly sexy, but Jim was never one to care about that.  
  
The longer the kiss went on, the more of Jim ended up in Sherlock’s lap.

"Listen," mumbled Sherlock. "Listen, we probably shouldn’t-"  
  
But he spoke the words between kisses, and he kept kissing Jim, and he touched Jim’s tongue with his own and let his hands creep along Jim’s sides until his arms were looped around him and Jim was sitting in the space between Sherlock’s lean thighs, because it felt  _so good_. His heart was pounding, his stomach churning in a way he found delightfully agreeable, and a certain hot and achy feeling had settled in the vicinity of where Jim was sitting that Sherlock had never liked before but found he rather liked now.

"Ooh," Jim cooed breathily into Sherlock’s mouth, and at last moved his hand from the grass to Sherlock’s chest. "Ooh, that’s- that’s a bit of all right, isn’t it?"  
  
The more their tongues met, the more excited Jim got, his thighs hooked over Sherlock’s hips, his knees bent, forcing Sherlock to bow his back to come down. Their height difference was pronounced, Jim didn’t care, he dragged Sherlock to him.  
  
” _Ooooh,_ " Jim marveled, "I think we should. I think- we should- do whatever we want. Mm! This is-  _fun_.”

"Why didn’t we do this before?" Sherlock whispered breathlessly.  
  
Things he had observed before suddenly made sense; boys giving each other knowing looks and elbowing, the couples he’d spied in corners, the way certain people stared at his mouth instead of his eyes whenever they were speaking. He had just assumed before that they were all idiots, but this wasn’t idiocy at all, this was  _brilliant_.  
  
Then he felt something, a sort of prickly sensation at the back of his neck that made him push Jim away. He shoved harder than he’d intended to, and Jim landed hard on his back in the grass with his limbs sprawling and was already looking irate when Sherlock said, by way of explanation, “Mycroft is coming.”

"Mycroft," Jim said carefully, gathering himself and trying to look at the grass stain that would very obviously be on his very expensive cotton shirt, "Will know anyway, so you shouldn’t ought to have done that."

When Sherlock's brother did make his appearance, Jim's sulking was painfully obvious, his features twisted up in a pout as he leaned back on the grass with his hands behind his head.  
  
There was no point, in Jim's mind, in trying to hide anything from Mycroft, because Mycroft always knew everything.


End file.
